Top 50 Questions Rocks and Minerals

Top 50 Questions Rocks and Minerals by Seymour Simon

This book uses 50 questions to identify different types of rocks and how they are found. Some of the questions are very forced to provide their answers. However, most are fairly reasonable. It has some nice pictures.

Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography

Too High and Too Steep: Reshaping Seattle’s Topography by David B. Williams

Seattle's Mohai museum has 3d model of Seattle where you can hit to "bring down" the changes in the city's topography. Land has been reclaimed from many areas, especially along the Duwamish. Water has also been extended via the ship canal to connect Lake Washington to the ocean. These are some impressive engineering accomplishments. This book details the various changes along with the process and people behind them.

The book begins with a history of how Seattle was shaped in the first place. Volcanos, earthquakes and glaciers all have played important roles in shaping the Seattle we know. The Duwamish and other tribes have occupied the area for some time and have caused some minor changes in the landscape (mostly from coastal "garbage dumps") The big changes came with the white settlers and especially transportation. They wanted a railroad. They needed a way for it to get places. Thus they built trestles over tideflats.  Why not fill in the tideflats to get more land and make it easier? And it was done. Hills seemed to impede the city. Why not use mining experience to sluice one away. Done! A canal? Sure. There were plans for more flattening, but they eventually fell by the wayside.

The great topographical engineering era ended with the great depression. The economic benefit of flattening ended up not being as great as expected, and the distance from water may have made it more difficult to sluice other hills. The dominance of the car also changed the calculus. Cars were not as impeded by topography, and thus instead of flattening hills, the new change was to demolish neighborhoods to make way for highways. A tunnel might by used to get around some steep spots. 

The author has gone out to identify many of the areas where great projects have taken place. He has traveled to many of the modern places that have been significantly impacted by this geo-engineering efforts. This would make for a nice "tour" of Seattle.

Bretz's Flood: The Remarkable Story of a Rebel Geologist and the World's Greatest Flood

Bretz's Flood: The Remarkable Story of a Rebel Geologist and the World's Greatest Flood by John Soennichsen

Eastern Washington state has a bizarre landscape. There are "dry falls" and other large geological formations. J. Harlen Bretz believed these came from a large flooding event. Other geologists scoffed at this. (They were also reluctant to accept this because it could seem to give credence to the biblical flood.) Eventually, many of the old geologists died off and Bretz's view became accepted. Lake Missoula is seen as the source of this flood. 

Bretz was originally from the midwest. He taught high school in Seattle. He later returned east and taught at the University of Chicago and continued teaching and engaging in fieldwork. He lived into his late 90s as he finally saw his views accepted. 

Earthquake Storms: The Fascinating History and Volatile Future of the San Andreas Fault

Earthquake Storms looks at the earthquakes in California (and the San Andreas fault in particular.) Quakes often come in clusters together. There are many different fault lines in California. Some of the interesting quakes are those that occur in areas where the fault was not known. The book explores some history of geology and earthquakes. Other faults are touched, but the overall focus is on California.

Full-Rip 9.0: The Next Big Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest

Full-Rip 9.0: The Next Big Earthquake in the Pacific Northwest by Sandi Doughton

I'll admit that I didn't think much of this book when it was sitting around the house. The cover made it look like a poorly written self-published alarmist book. I was pleasantly surprised that it was a well-written book. The author is a journalist living in the Pacific Northwest. She has the journalistic flair for making a complex subject east to understand. I had started reading this paperback. I then found the e-book at the library. After many false starts, I found that using the Alexa app, I was able to get this Kindle book read to me. The voice was fairly clear with a decent pace, but there did not seem to be a way to get it to go faster.

The book is primarily a chronological unfolding of our understanding of earthquakes in the northwest. There were not many people keeping records in the area when early earthquakes occured. However, there are some oral histories and legends from the Native Americans in the regions. Some later earthquakes had some documentation that could teased out by early settlers. However, for most of the early earthquakes, most knowledge has been found by analyzing the land. Soil cores can identify anomalies that correlate with earthquakes. Tree rings can help to provide more precise dating. Carbon dating can help provide details from older quakes. Identifiers of larger quakes can also be correlated with detailed tsunami data that has been kept by Japan. Lidar data can also be used to attempt to find fault lines and other anomalies that may be difficult to identify. 

Earthquake prediction has been a total failure so far. Even trying to identify the susceptibility of different areas to earthquakes can be challenging. Japan has one of the most advanced level of earthquake preparedness, and even they were caught off guard. In the Northwest, many older brick buildings would likely crumble in large earthquake. The Space Needle had been over-engineered and may be fine. Many wood framed houses may do well, while "tilt up" warehouses will likely fail. Of greater concern will be infrastructure. Pipes and powerlines may fail. It could take a long time before infrastructure can be repaired. Even if buildings survive there may be internal damage and it could take months before the normal life is started again. It is important to be prepared to survive on your own for at least a few days before any help would be available.

Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations

The top layer of "dirt" is what helps our civilizations survive. Many great empires have died after a thousand years due in part to their destruction of this topsoil. Darwin dedicated his final career work to the exploration of topsoil production and the important role that worms played in producing more soil. The early book spends a great deal of time discussing different civilizations and the impact they had on the topsoil. Soil degradation is viewed as a significant reason for the rise and fall of empires. As populations grow, irrigation and other large scale works are needed to help support overfarmed soils. This leads to creation of government structures. Further growth leads to farming of marginal lands and erosion. Vast empires are needed to provide food for the urban areas. Eventually, the degradation puts the society on the edge, and a small climatic change or weather anomaly can push the society over the edge. "Empire" food production can lead to events like the Irish Potato famine. Many people in Ireland starved due to the potato crop failure. Meanwhile, cattle were being exported from Ireland to England.
The author does a great job of making his point. He uses simple math to show that intensive agriculture results in a rate of soil erosion that limits most civilizations to primary lifespan of about 1000 years. Some can last longer if they are blessed with renewable soil (like the Nile River), or can extend their farming reach. However, without care to the soil, they will fall. Soil is a tricky resource because the benefits of conservation often don't occur until the following generation. It is very hard to get political buy in for the short term sacrifices needed for long term gain.
While the ideas in the book are good, the writing is not. The chapters are organized by topic, but they ramble on, jumping around from example to example somewhat haphazardly. The point could be made in a book a fraction of the size. The ideas are strong enough to encourage making it through the book in spite of the poor organization.

A Short History of Nearly Everything

In A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson starts with the beginning of the universe and works his way down. He laments the poor stats of science textbooks. They often have a few diagrams that attract you to the possibilities of learning, then let you down with very poor text. In this work, he tries to provide an accessible "history" of the world. It starts with the big bang, works through how the universe, suns and planets were formed, then goes down to describe life on earth. From here, it goes through the initial history of organisms, the evolution to different species, and the many extinction events that have taken place and the new species that have come to fill voids. The narrative follows a dual chronology approach. The author discusses key events in rough chronology that the occurred. Within the discussion of the events, he discusses the way that our knowledge of the events has unraveled, with special attention to the key figures in the discovery process. In many of the cases the "first discoverer" is disregarded by society, and only comes to light after somebody else has popularized and attached his name to the discovery (it is almost always a he). The earth has often been much hotter than it is today. (We are in part of a long term ice age.) However, global warming has a lot of uncertainties that could make matters worse. The book ends with a look at homo sapien and how he has come on the scene, with both the ability to both understand and destroy the world.

Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories

In most of this other books, Simon Winchester has done a great job with a narrow topic. He goes off on tangents, provides interesting anecdotes and brings out interesting bits of trivia to bring alive a small event or person.

In Atlantic, he tries to tackle a larger topic, and the results are mixed. He does provide plenty of anecdotes and tangential stories. However, the central focus is missing. Just about any part of modern western civilization could be tied to the Atlantic. The book ends up doing little more than spurting out groups of semi-related facts. It is still a fairly readable nonfiction book, but falls way short when compared to his other books.

I was most impressed with the discussion of global warming. He provided one of the most intellectual honest accounts of the facts of global warming. He acknowledges there has been some mischief going on in scientific circles. However, in spite of this, there is very clear indication that the earth temperature has been increasing. There is a suspicion that this has been caused by man's activities. However, there could also be cyclical factors in play. While the Katrina hurricane season was especially severe, there have been other very calm seasons that followed. And in spite of what seems to be an increase in catastrophic events, these have been mere blips on the geological scale. (With the damage to humankind caused in part by people's propensity to locate themselves in danger zones.)

While there are some good bits in here, this is one Simon Winchester book that can easily be skipped.

The Map That Changed the World

This is one of my least favorite Simon Winchester books. Usually I love the deep tangents that he takes as he gradually brings about the importance of a person or place. However, in this book, I was never really convinced of William Smith's importance. Sure he did some great work for geology and mapmaking, but the book didn't make a good case for why we should care.

The Genesis Enigma: Why the Bible is Scientifically Accurate

The first few chapters of this book ramble a lot, nearly hiding his main point in tangential facts. It is unclear what audience he is targeting. He goes through the Genesis creation account, saying that it accurate predicts what an ancient Hebrew could have never known about the current science of the earth's creation. (Though some of this seems rather forced.) At the same time, it also bashes creationism, saying that biological evidence clearly makes "creationism" impossible. These chapters seem to be about using the tale of Genesis to advance some of the author's pet evolutionary theories. (This is a nice twist on the apologist quest to use any science as 'proof' of a biblical theory.)

The appendix, is primarily a rehash of Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible?, which seems to be out of place (and clearly out of the author's domain of expertise.)

The saving grace of the book is the last chapter. This chapter takes on the creation / evolution debate itself. Instead of declaring one or the other the "winner", it acknowledges that there are things that we can't explain scientifically (and others that we may just not know how to measure.) Religion still provides explanations for areas that science cannot yet explain. Meanwhile, scientific explanation fits in brilliantly with a figurative explanation of scripture. Instead of being opposed, science and religion are great complements.